Welcome to Truth in Texas Textbooks Coalition

by TNT on November 6, 2014

Thank you for visiting Truth in Texas Textbooks. The goal of the TTT Coalition team members is to provide textbook reviews, ratings and specific comments about the social studies textbooks that are being considered for the 2015–’16 school. A final decision will be made by the State Board of Education (SBOE) in late November 2014.

The total number of books reviewed were 32 high school and/or middle school textbooks. Cumulatively TTT reviewers compiled 469 pages of factual errors, imbalanced presentation of materials, omission of information, opinions disguised as facts and additionally questions found in the teacher’s editions that are considered “agenda building” or “leading questions” to conclusions not supported by facts.

The Texas Education Agency is the state agency that governs the textbook review process. The details of this can be found at the TEA website under the Proclamation 2015 webpage that can be found here.

The persons who oversee this process are the 15 elected members of the SBOE. They can be found at this link on the TEA website. If you are unsure which SBOE member represents you, go to this link and determine which district you are in.

TTT Coalition has created a “template” for conducting any scale type of textbook review from a single school looking at a single book to a state wide scale. To learn how you and others can conduct reviews on a local or even state-wide scale such as TTT, please email us at truthintexastextbooks@gmail.com to learn more.

TTT is the largest effort by average citizens assisted by subject matter experts to do full reviews on social studies textbooks. TTT will begin to populate the website with reviews by other reputable individuals and groups such as TTT who wish to share their reviews with us.

The goal is to have as many social studies textbook reviews posted in one place that will give parents, teachers and Board of Education members a single source to find these reviews to insure the publishers are held accountable for producing factual and honest social studies textbooks. This will be an ongoing process handled by volunteers.

No one is getting paid; we are not a 501c nor plan at this point to become one. We merely want to have the most factual and intelligently honest textbooks possible for our children.

This website is dedicated to two groups:

!. The children of Texas (our future!)

2.. The TTT Coalition volunteers who have expended thousands of hours on conference calls, reading training newsletters, going through “mock reviews” and finally conducting the actual reviews on the textbooks. As well as putting up with me.

Over 5 million children will use these textbooks over the next 8 years. These children will benefit greatly by the work our volunteers have done to insure their social studies textbooks are more reflective of a factual history that has until now had been in many cases textbooks filled with with “altered history” subject matter.

TTT is also indebted to the “Volunteer State” of Tennessee and the work they did initially in 2013 that was a great launching point for our effort. Without their initial help, this project would not have had the success it did. Their work can be found at this site. A small sample of their work can be found by seeing the “Textbook Tattler” And quite frankly as we were told, many of these same errors were found in the textbooks that TTT reviewed.

TTT has reached out to each publisher and asked to speak to them in order to facilitate change and in correcting the errors we found. They are to respond to the SBOE and TEA regarding our inputs sometime this week or early next week. We will put up their replies so everyone can see what changes are being agreed to and which ones aren’t.

Based upon those final edits we will rate the books as either “Good”, “Poor” or “Worse” but this will occur sometime in December most likely as we assess the number of changes and the impact that has on the quality of the textbook. The SBOE will vote “up or down” on the textbooks on or about November 21, 2014.

A final hearing by the SBOE will occur on Tuesday, November 18 at 1 PM at the Texas Education Agency, located at the William B. Travis (WBT) State Office Building, 1701 North Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 1n room Room 1-109, found on the first floor. Parking is $8 across the street in the bottom of the State History Museum

Feel free to come and express your opinions.

To do so, you need to register to testify here or you can send your comments via email to the SBOE at sboesupport@tea.state.tx.us an include in the subject line Proclamation 2015 Comments and include the following information

1. The date of the meeting (November 18, 2014)

2. ; The subject of the comments (Proclamation 2015, Social Studies Textbook Adoption)

3. Your name

4. The name of the author’s organizational affiliation, if any

5. Whether the author is a lobbyist registered with the Texas Ethics Commission.

There will be much more to follow. Our work is not flawless. Errors that have been made are our own and will be corrected when supportable facts are provided that show our findings are in error.

This has been over a year in the making. Our volunteers have put their lives on hold in making this happen and they are the real heroes in what is the largest and most extensive textbook review of social studies textbooks by “average” citizens in the US. I hope others like them will step up in other states and in Texas when more textbooks in other areas are put forth for adoption.